Is soccer in the US letting Hispanic talent slip through the cracks?

*All those weekend soccer pick-up games and community leagues? They’re not sanctioned by a major soccer association, so it’s hard for working-class U.S. Latino soccer players to break into the big leagues or international play. It seems U.S. soccer has an elitist side. VL


downloadBy Kristan Heneage, The Guardian

As Miguel Ibarra posed for photographs with his new team, Club Leon of Mexico, George Kuntz would no doubt have cracked a smile. It was a moment of validation for a coach who three years earlier had urged nigh every contemporary in Major League Soccer to take Ibarra in the 2013 SuperDraft.

[pullquote]… 14 years ago, there were 60,000 players playing in unaffiliated men’s leagues in southern California alone.[/pullquote]

“I still have the texts on my phone,” he says proudly. A memento of what might have been for the former UCI Irvine coach, he estimates half a dozen coaches said no before the Portland Timbers eventually took Ibarra. However they would cut him not long after, casting him into a sea of uncertainty.

Some years later, after a stop in NASL, Ibarra is now a USA international and soon to be plying his trade in Liga MX. Enrique Cardenas – currently with Atlante – is another example of working-class Hispanic players (better off Hispanic players do not appear to hit the same hurdles) falling through the cracks in US soccer and questioned the draft process after going unselected in 2014.

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[Photo by Erik DrostFlickr]
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